Most traditional cities / towns in China?

[AlexanderH]

hey everyone --

I'm curious as to what some of the more traditional places are in China. I'm talking about little old tea shops, little English spoken, lots of great cultural artifacts (like parts of the south in the USA).

I'll be headed to Beijing, and although there will certainly be some cultural artifacts in all the museums and parks, I'm wondering if there are any hollywood-esque type Chinese towns left.

Any pointers would be lovely!

[skylee]

Consider Pingyao in Shanxi. It is not as commercialised as Lijiang IMHO. But it is a world heritage town, so it is not really that undeveloped.

Photos -> http://images.google.com.hk/images?um=1&hl=zh-TW&q=pingyao&ndsp=20&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

[fanglu]

There are lots of pretty 水乡 towns not too far (ie within a few hours bus trip) from Shanghai. But for the exact reason that they are pretty and have a traditional chinese-type feel to them they are also pretty touristy.

If you want something more genuine, take a slow train and pick any small stop to get off. Might not be that interesting though.

[Shi Tong]

I know that some really ancient cities are: xian/ changan/ chengdu/ changsha, but I'm not sure what they're like now.. they were around a few thousand years ago, and two (three?) of these were capital cities, so they might be of interest?

[roddy]

It's unlikely that any major city will have that much left - sure, they'll have a few 'attractions' but even Beijing is still doing its best to knock down its heritage and reproduce it in plastic. Smaller out of the way places are a better bet, even if they do have a ticket office out front.

[Lu]

Kaifeng is nice too, it's not allowed/possible to build highrises in the city (I forgot why), so much of the old architecture is still standing. It's not touristy either (or at least wasn't when I was there some years ago).

[Goujian]

I think there are some villages in Shanghai and much of rural southern Jiangsu/northern Zhejiang have this rustic farm feel to it, along with traditional buildings.